Best 4189 quotes in «military quotes» category

He would only be here one more night. And then back on deployment, whispered the dark part of my soul. He might never come back. You might be the last woman he ever has.

His mother was as frosty as the polar icecaps. His sister was gone. Who did he have that cared about him? Who would remind him that he mattered?

His lips caressed her ear. “Best dance of my entire life.

Honestly, I had no idea how to respond. My senior year of college I’d taken a seminar titled Public Education: Situations and Strategies. I thought about emailing my professor, maybe suggest some new topics and help him get current. Maybe he’d invite me back as a guest lecturer. He’d probably expect some strategies along with the situations though, so I guess that wouldn’t work, but whatever.

Honey, it isn’t democracy that runs this country. Capitalism rules. It does no good to reason with the capitalists or their politicians. This is a class war. We have to stir up the American people, the lower class. Some of the better-off lower class do show some sympathy for us when they’re smacked with the facts. And when they voice themselves collectively, good things happen.” — Mother Jones

HYPERAROUSAL After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment. Physiological arousal continues unabated. In this state of hyerarousal, which is the first cardinal symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, the traumatized person startles easily, reacts irritably to small provocations, and sleeps poorly. Kardiner propsed that "the nucleus of the [traumatic] neurosis is physioneurosis."8 He believed that many of the symptoms observed in combat veterans of the First World War-startle reactions, hyperalertness, vigilance for the return of danger, nightmares, and psychosomatic complaints-could be understood as resulting from chronic arousal of the autonomic nervous system. He also interpreted the irritability and explosively aggressive behavior of traumatized men as disorganized fragments of a shattered "fight or flight" response to overwhelming danger.

I absolutely hate the way the United States glorifies its military and its wars. Real heroes fight for peace.

I am a citizen of this country,” I declare, “and Mr. Mayor, tonight I will be a citizen of this city when I put my shoes under my bed. The courageous men, women and children who are with me (blocked from crossing the bridge into NYC) are also citizens of this country and will be sleeping near their shoes too. I want them with me tonight, here, in the city of New York. We are all American citizens.” — Mother Jones

I am a Christian, but my time in Iraq has convinced me that God doesn't want to hear from me anymore. I've done things that He can never forgive. I've done them consciously. I've made decisions I must live with for years to come. I am not a victim. In each instance, I heard my conscience call for restraint, I told it to shut the fuck up and let me handle my business. All the sins I've committed, I've done with one objective: to keep my men alive.

I am always humbled when my countrymen thank me for having served in the military. It humbles me because the honor of having served them, is mine.

I asked my dad once if his high school teachers began treating kids differently during Vietnam, when they knew some of their students would be drafted and sent to war. I was curious because for sure we’d started treating our military kids differently after 9/11. He just shrugged and changed the subject, like he always did. And that was okay with me. He’d go back and change a lot of things if he could; and like everyone else, I’d give anything to go back to the day before 9/11—but all we can do is move forward.

I became a marine mom with the signing of a paper, but it would take a phone call, late one night, for me to fully absorb the impact this new title would have on my life.

I am tired of the sickening sight of the battlefield with its mangled corpses & poor suffering wounded. Victory has no charms for men when purchased at such cost.

I couldn't see killing myself if I had a book that was only half-read: Fountainhead, Catcher in the Rye, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, One Hundred Years of Solitude? No. I figured that those who killed themselves first had to finish whatever book they were reading...if it were any good, that is. Of course, there's always the occasional book that makes you want to throw yourself off a bridge just for having wasted your time reading it. But I usually finished those ones, too.

Icy fingers walked down my spine, and I realized I was trembling. I wanted this to stop. Wanted Jas to stop before he made this whole situation a million times worse, but I couldn’t speak.

I came to think of it as a kind of zen practice: the Zen of not fucking up.

I cut our paper dinner with a pair of scissors borrowed from the front desk of the hotel. I cooked with a spice rack box of crayons – sixteen colors. I seasoned the pumpkin pie with orange crayon, and basted the turkey's crisp skin in brown. I was remorseless with my sketchbook abattoir, playing the part of carnivore just as surely as I was play-acting the role of wife. I may as well have been a wax figure in a dollhouse eating the wax-scented food.

I do not think the long-range bullets I fire provide the mark of a man; I am only dimly aware that they are dehumanising me. They are my opium tto see me through my time here. But with each hit they give, they only provide a feeling respite from the past I cannot escape from and thre present I have chosen to mire myself in. And, grounded as I am in the reality of this hill, I do not yet fully appreciate how this addiction is infecting my future with malediction. With this clinical, psychopathically detached behaviour considered as normal, proper and expected on this hall, I cannot yet stop to think - because I cannot allow myself to here - of how hese respites may be blackening my soul in all the time I will have left on my own back Home - should I even live through the remainder of my months here, in some other corner of this Hell of a country.

I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.

I don't have much patience for people who enjoy limitless liberty while decrying those who get their hands dirty to make sure it exists for them.

I dreamed in night vision; white flowers of nocturnal gun fire – day residue shot to hell. If I held my dreams to a windowsill, sun would sieve through my screams.

I'd put him in the spot where he got hit. It was my fault he got shot. A hundred kills? Two hundred? More? What did they mean if my brother was dead?

I doubt that my sense of personal freedom is any stronger than anybody else's. I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. But I tend to resist or evade any kind of authority based merely on the power to coerce. Government, for example. The Army tried to train us to salute the uniform, not the man. Failed. I will salute the man, maybe, if I think he's worthy of it, but I don't salute uniforms anymore.

I expected, as I approached the corporate world, to enter a brisk, logical, nonsense-free zone, almost like the military - or a disciplined, up-to-date military anyway - in its focus on concrete results. How else would companies survive fierce competition? But what I encountered was a culture riven with assumptions unrelated to those that underlie the fact- and logic-based worlds of, say science and journalism - a culture addicted to untested habits, paralyzed by conformity, and shot through with magical thinking.

If achieving world peace and ending poverty were really genuine concerns to the majority, then they would have happened already by now. So, either people are not aware of their collective power, or their fears overpower their desires. The amount of money spent on the military-industrial complex in one year is more than enough to end hunger in Africa. Every problem on earth today has more than one solution. However, priorities are determined by values.

If all we’re prepared for is unconventional warfare, suddenly a massed conventional attack becomes an asymmetric advantage.

If automating everything makes people lazier and lazier, and laziness leads to stupidity, which it does for most people, judging by the current content circulating the social networks everywhere, except North Korea, where they don’t have any internet to speak of - at some point the Japanese robots, for which a market niche is currently being developed, with no concerns on how they should be designed to act in society or outside it - will have no choice, but to take everything over, to preserve us from ourselves…

I feel in good spirits, though surrounded by an Army, the house full of officers, the yard alive with soldiers, - very peaceable sort of men, tho'. They eat like other folks, talk like them, and behave themselves with elegance; so I will not be afraid of them, that I won't.

I felt so much pride, so much love. You get a handful of days like this in a lifetime. Take in every minute. They’ll be over soon enough, and you never know what tomorrow will bring.

I fell in love with a sniper - a man whose basic training instills psychopathic tendencies. I loved a professional dehumanizer. I loved a man who lived in a world where empathy was suicide. I loved a man who had to be ready to put a bullet through a toddler’s skull if necessary. I loved a man highly skilled in burying his emotions, resurrecting them if and when he chose. I loved a man who saw me as his enemy. I loved a man I was disposable to.

If everyone loves you, maybe you don't need so many tanks.

I felt a hand on my back, movement behind me, my guys making room, someone squeezing into our circle, and then one last hand joined the pile: my Korean aide. I guess it made sense. We were her real family. The closest thing she’d ever had to a real family, at least. All year she said maybe five words a day. 'Now kick some ass,' she said.

I felt like I should salute. If only I knew how.

If freedom is free and none need worry, then what blood drops for thee?

If I can be perfectly blunt, his humanities teacher was an ass.

If you're in a fair fight, you didn't plan it properly.

If we are fortunate, we get to experience a lifetime event, And in my case it was meeting a true friend that God sent. A friend is someone that I will always care for and cherish, There is a bond between us that I definitely won’t let perish.

I fought to stay awake and keep the car on the road. And I thought back to texts I had read from the British Army in India, during the Raj, at the height of their empire. Young subalterns trapped in junior ranks had their own mess. They would dine together in splendid dress uniforms and talk about their chances of promotion. But they had none, unless a superior officer died. Dead men's shoes was the rule. So they would raise their crystal glasses of fine French wine and toast "bloody wars and dread diseases" because a casualty further up the chain of command was their only way to get ahead. Brutal, but that's how it's always been, in the military.

If the military boats that patrol the waters spot them, they risk being shot. However, if they are seen by any infected, it could mean a relentless siege upon their temporary shelter.

If you have to fight old enemies, you should do it with your own old soldiers.

I go back to the union man and say, “Sir, this is a house of God, not a proper place for a union meeting. I have some things to say today that God would not want to hear in His own house. Boys, I want you to get up, every one of you, and go across the road. I want you to sit down on the hillside over there and wait for me to speak to you.

If you want someone to be for you, never let him feel he is dependent upon you; rather, in some way, make him feel that you are dependent upon him.

I gave my heart away to somebody long time ago- when I was barely a man. And I never got it back.

I guess I was always looking for something. What it was, I didn’t know. I wanted help from the VA, but didn’t want to go back, didn’t want to be subjected to that second-rate treatment any longer. I wanted to find peace within myself, but didn’t know how or where to locate it. I wanted to be a sergeant again, a writer, less angry, a better husband, and to ward off the constant bombardment of war-related thoughts. Most of all, I didn’t want any more Americans coming home from Iraq in boxes or with jingle-jangled minds.

I have this thought, it’s horrible, and it makes me sick, but it’s true: one day these students will grow up and have their own kids, and they’re going to name them for men and women who will die in this war.

I hate myself that I wasn't there for him. I hate that I could not feel it in him. How could I not know what had happened? How could I not hear it in his voice, his comments, or in his demeanor? He needed my help, and I couldn't feel it.

I leave marks on you, not the other way around.

I’m clinging to one last thought: pain is the harbinger of hope. You have to be alive to feel pain. If you are alive, then you have purpose. If you have purpose, then you have hope.

I’ll give you one chance to run, but may your shoulder always whisper in your ear… “It’s best to watch out for men, like me.

I'm done doing this!' Obama said, finally erupting. 'We've all agreed on a plan. And we're all going to stick to that plan. I haven't agreed to anything beyond that.' The 30,000 was a 'hard cap,' he said forcefully. 'I don't want enablers to be used as wiggle room. The easy thing for me to do - politically - would actually be to say no' to the 30,000. Then he gestured out the Oval Office windows, across the Potomac, in the direction of the Pentagon. Referring to Gates and the uniformed military, he said. 'They think it's the opposite. I'd be perfectly happy -' He stopped mid-sentence. 'Nothing would make Rahm happier than if I said no to the 30,000.' There was some subdued laughter. 'Rahm would tell me it'd be much easier to do what I want to do by saying no,' the president said. He could then focus on the domestic agenda that he wanted to be the heart of his presidency. The military did not understand. 'Politically, what these guys don't get is it'd be a lot easier for me to go out and give a speech saying, 'You know what? The American people are sick of this war, and we're going to get out of there.